


The Wintering Apple Tree

by Metallic_Sweet



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Apples, Canon Compliant, Copious amounts of alcohol - Freeform, First Love, Historical Accuracy, Hurt/Comfort, Leeks, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Repurposing a Cravat as a Rag, Scotland, Sharing a Bed, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-15 01:25:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19285255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metallic_Sweet/pseuds/Metallic_Sweet
Summary: Distantly, there is a siren.Aziraphale and Crowley, during the First World War





	The Wintering Apple Tree

The year is 1915. It is November 28. Sunday. 

“It’s still raining,” Aziraphale says, “in Gallipoli.” 

Crowley doesn’t respond immediately. They are sitting in a pub across Greyfriars. It’s dingy and smells of spilt ale. The stools are probably from the 1840s. Not the type of place Aziraphale would choose. Or Crowley for that matter.

“I hear it’s made everything quite dangerous,” Aziraphale says as a smattering of drizzle hits the pub windows. 

“I’m pretty sure,” Crowley says, without much inflection, “everything was dangerous to begin with.” 

The angel is quiet at that. They had both heard about War and Pestilence puttering about down in the Ottoman Empire recently. Crowley had heard specifically because he’d been ordered to stay out of it. Some Duke had mistaken his previous association with the Spanish Inquisition for interest in Holy War. Aziraphale heard the rumours through the angel gossip vine, which has been unusually busy. He has disconnected the brand new telephone line in his London bookshop.

Outside, a couple of carriages rattle over the cobblestones. They sound very heavy. 

“The rain,” Aziraphale continues for lack of anything else to talk about, “doesn’t look to be letting up soon.” 

“Should it?” Crowley asks, although he sounds less inquisitive and more uncertain. 

“Well,” Aziraphale starts before realising he doesn’t know how to answer. 

Neither of them have control over the weather. Aziraphale was recently across the Channel after disconnecting his telephone and would rather not think about it. He knows the weather has been cool and wet back here. He hadn’t meant to bring up Gallipoli in any shape or form, but, when they met two hours ago, Crowley mentioned the bizarre July hail before hissing into the awkward silence. Aziraphale noticed his hands were shaking. He couldn’t bring himself to point out July was four months ago. 

Since May, Crowley has been off. Consistently anxious in a way Aziraphale has never seen him. Aziraphale is hard-pressed to finger exactly when this started, but he does know when he noticed it. He had attempted to talk to Crowley about the _Lusitania_ , an incident that had deeply disturbed everyone. It was the last time they were in London together. They were sitting in the Ritz. It was the first time he saw Crowley’s hands shake.

“Absolutely awful,” he said, rather too high. “I can’t imagine what anyone was thinking.” 

He was staring at his hands like they belonged to someone else. Aziraphale opened his mouth but couldn’t figure out what to say. He shut his mouth. Opened it again. 

“I think,” he said, signalling the waiter, “we should have some water.”

“I don’t want water,” Crowley hissed; he looked up, a little wild. “Stiff. Scotch. Something strong.” 

Since then, they have drunk liquor together. They also have not gone back to the Ritz and have taken a break from London altogether with the bombings. Edinburgh and its pubs are their current norm, since Glasgow’s bombings are as interruptive as London. Crowley orders their drinks. Scotch, usually, as good wine is hard to come by. Aziraphale is more than willing to let Crowley lead. He has more of a taste for it than Aziraphale. 

They’ve had most of a bottle of Talisker. It might actually be good, but all Aziraphale’s muddled mind registers is that his body feels warmer. Crowley keeps eyeing the level of liquid left in the bottle and then what lives behind the bar. Aziraphale doesn’t know where this Talisker came from. It doesn’t fit with the rest of the pub. He doesn’t intend to miracle another. 

What Crowley said about the hail in July was, specifically:

“A wassste,” he chattered, trying and failing to smooth his napkin’s corners. “Broke those glasshousesss. Who knowsss when they might be repaired.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale breathed because he had been thinking about the state of human souls and how backed up the intake department in Heaven must be, “yes. Terrible. Awfully terrible.”

He watched Crowley struggle with the napkin. Crowley also watched himself struggling. It was awkward. It reminded Aziraphale of watching Jesus, the poor lad, pulled up on the cross. 

“To open the Gates of Heaven,” Aziraphale hears himself say before he catches himself.

“What?” Crowley asks, a little sharp. 

Aziraphale shakes his head. He opens his mouth to explain himself, finds it impossible, and shuts it again with an uneven shrug. Crowley stares at him. Down the bar, several men wearing hospital armbands look over a magazine together. Aziraphale can see the cover. It’s called _The Trail_.

Crowley, without taking his gaze off Aziraphale, picks up his drink. Drains it. Aziraphale picks up the bottle. He refills Crowley’s glass and tops off his own. 

“I miss wine,” he says as the barkeep picks up the bottle.

“It’s not good,” Crowley says, fingers clamping around his glass. 

One of the men begins reading from the magazine to his friends. It’s the instructions on how to pitch a tent on uneven ground. Aziraphale realises he’s the only one that is able to read. 

“But you like wine,” he says, more to keep Crowley talking than anything else. 

“I mean the lack of it,” Crowley clarifies, gripping his drink like the neck of a chicken. “With all that’s on.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale says, very softly. 

There isn’t really anything to say to that. 

 

The rain in Gallipoli turns into a blizzard.

There’s an apple tree growing on the allotment that Crowley has access to in Glasgow. The family asked him, back in March when the third daughter went off to France with the Red Cross, to look after it. More exactly, it was the Missus Mally who asked, sitting in Crowley’s reception room over a cup of pale tea. 

“With Alice gone, it’s just me,” she said, worrying the handle of Crowley’s good teacup, “and I, I—well, you see, with the bombings and the smoke, my nerves… Well, I am going to say with my sister. In Linlithgow. I won’t be able to watch the blossoms, and you’ve been ever so good with your strawberries, so I thought—”

“You needn’t explain any further,” Crowley said, offering her a sugar cube, even though he didn’t have any earlier. “Of course I’ll keep it up.” 

It is December now. The Mallys are all gone—Mister Mally, all three of the daughters, and the singular son have gone into the ground in France. Missus Mally had been right about her nerves. She passed away on November 30. Her sister’s letter regrets to inform Crowley of the news and also begs him to continue looking after the tree until it can be replanted come next summer. It was a wedding gift along with the allotment purchase. 

It is raining quite terribly when Crowley reads this letter and the news about the blizzard. His maid’s daughter had brought up the paper and mail with the teatime tray because Crowley hadn’t gotten out of bed yet. She left it on the reception room table. Crowley, drawn by the scent of a fresh biscuit, dragged himself out of bed to the couch. 

Sitting with the papers in his lap and letter open in hand, he fights the very strong urge to slide off the couch and back to bed.

There’s knock on his reception door. 

“Mister Crowley,” Lizzy, the maid’s daughter, calls, quite loudly, “are you awake?”

Crowley fumbles. The papers slide off his knees and onto the ground. He bends down to gather them, jumbling the sheets. 

“Yesss, yesss,” he says before clearing his throat. “What is it?”

“You have a visitor,” she says, less loudly. “A Mister, um—”

“Aziraphale,” comes a much softer but obviously quite apologetic voice.

Crowley stares at the paper and letter. Today’s headline in _The Scottish Catholic Observer_ says something, but Crowley, even as he stares at it, would be hard-pressed to explain what. 

A knock. 

“Mister Crowley?”

Something deep in Crowley is doing something. To avoid finding out what these things are, Crowley gets up. Dumps the paper and the letter on the couch. He fumbles with the ties of his house coat and turns his back to the door, looking around for his glasses. They are back in his bedroom. Hopefully next to the basin. 

“Aziraphale, yes!” he calls, stumbling back towards his bedroom. “Let him in, Lizzy. Bring up, uh, another biscuit. And the good teacup.”

He crashes back into his bedroom. Almost trips over his duvet, which is mostly on the floor and nearly to the door. He finds his glasses on the floor half beneath the basin. They aren’t cracked or bent. Small mercies.

He reappears in the reception room as Lizzy steps around Aziraphale, who is standing a pace inside of the doorway. He lifts his gaze from the dropped paper and letter and blinks at Crowley. In his neatly pressed light tan and cream suit, he looks incredibly out of place. 

“It’s quite late for tea,” Aziraphale says as Lizzy uses her foot to nudge the door partially shut.

“Oh,” Crowley says because Aziraphale would know. “I have a bottle of… something. Lizzy, bring up glasses.”

“Yes, Mister Crowley,” Lizzy calls, a couple steps down the stairs. 

“I was,” Aziraphale says as Crowley crumples up the paper and sets the letter face down on a clear space on the table, “going to invite you for dinner.”

“I’m not in the mood,” Crowley says, tossing the wadded paper towards his writing desk and missing spectacularly. “To go out, I mean. Let’s have a drink? Did you happen to see my maid?” 

“The girl’s mother?” Aziraphale asks, finally stepping fully into the room. “I didn’t.”

Crowley moves to his writing desk. Rain splatters against the window. He flips his watch over on the desk. Opens it on the second try. It’s five-thirteen and dark out. He hopes that his maid shows up soon. 

“Is something wrong?” Aziraphale asks, concerned.

“Um,” Crowley says, closing his watch and turning around. “Yes. Probably. What brings you here?”

Aziraphale’s head cocks. Slightly and to the right. He blinks a couple of times. Crowley realises, quite belatedly, that Aziraphale looks very troubled. 

“I met someone,” he says. “May I sit down?”

Crowley motions jerkily to the couch. Aziraphale crosses the room and sits. After he settles, Crowley crosses over to the fireplace. He adjusts his housecoat over his thighs and grabs the poker to try and get the weak embers up. It’s cold. 

Lizzy reappears with a knock on the door. She has a bottle of some mystery French red that Crowley registered in his possession, a corkscrew, two glasses, and a plate with several of her mother’s biscuits. Aziraphale murmurs his thanks and accepts the corkscrew.

“Lizzy,” Crowley says, standing up and putting the poker back on the rack, “did your mother say when she’d be back?”

She looks down, fingers twisting in her skirt. “No, Mister Crowley.” 

Aziraphale pulls the cork out of the bottle. Crowley reaches up to push his glasses up his nose. It’s a mistake. His fingers have started that annoying trembling. He adjusts his glasses as Aziraphale pours the wine. 

“Make yourself some dinner from what’s left downstairs,” Crowley says because he isn’t Famine. “Do not worry about us. Go on.” 

A bright smile lights Lizzy’s face. “Thank you, Mister Crowley,” she says before bowing and scurrying back down the stairs. 

Aziraphale smiles at him as Crowley crosses the room to the couch. He takes the glass offered and does his best to ignore how Aziraphale’s gaze flickers over his traitorous hands. 

“That was very good of you,” Aziraphale says. 

“Children need to eat,” Crowley hisses. 

“They do,” Aziraphale agrees, very mild. 

They toast, pleasantly silent, and drink. It’s an almost emotionless red, claiming to be a Merlot. Crowley sets his glass down with an uneven clink. Aziraphale studies the liquid with a somewhat perturbed expression. 

“So,” Crowley says, “this person?”

“Oh,” Aziraphale says, tearing his gaze away from his glass and up to Crowley. “Hm. Yes. His name is Rivers. I met him while… while doing a bit of work. He’s a doctor, among other things. We had an enlightening discussion.” 

He stops. Looks back at his wine. Crowley waits a long moment. When Aziraphale doesn’t continue, Crowley reaches and picks up his own glass again. 

His hands are still shaking. It’s incredibly annoying. 

“It’s bothering you.”

“Well,” Aziraphale starts.

“You wouldn’t have come here otherwise,” Crowley points out because Aziraphale is not keen on unplanned train rides. “You won’t be back to Edinburgh before tomorrow morning at this time.” 

“I didn’t take the train,” Aziraphale says, his eyebrows drawing slightly together.

Crowley opens his mouth. Shuts it. Aziraphale, his brow still furrowed, takes a deep sip of wine.

They sit for a long time, drinking. Outside, the wind splatters more rain against the windows. The scent of boiling leeks wafts up from the kitchen downstairs. Crowley was not aware he had leeks. 

“This doctor,” Crowley starts, setting down his empty glass. “What was the conversation about?” 

“Yes,” Aziraphale says. 

He leans forward. Sets his glass down. He considers their empty glasses and the bottle of bad wine. Crowley attempts to place when was the last time he saw Aziraphale like this. He can’t remember. Somehow, this is more disturbing. 

Very distantly, there is a siren. Crowley and Aziraphale both look to the window, but the view is dark. The room is dim. The only light is from the hearth. 

When Aziraphale looks back to Crowley, his eyes are very bright. 

“We talked about the war,” Aziraphale says, and there’s an uncertain waver to his voice; he looks back at the wine bottle. “He is treating those nervous cases by what he calls a ‘talking cure’. He sits with those poor lads and they talk until they find some solace. Catharsis. He thinks the nervous trouble is all down to self-preservation gone a bit off.” 

Crowley stares. Aziraphale reaches out and picks up the wine bottle. He refills their glasses. For a moment, he stares at the bottle’s label. In the light of the dim fire, his eyes shimmer. The bottle doesn’t change. Crowley is suddenly very frightened he may see Aziraphale cry. 

“He is a wonderful man,” Aziraphale says, very sad. 

He doesn’t cry. 

Oddly, as they share a silent toast, Crowley wishes he did. 

 

The worst part is no demon or angel could come up with any of this. 

Humans are gifted with imagination. Aside from Aziraphale and Crowley, who have spent rather too much time around humans, angels and demons have no capacity for imagination. They don’t need it. Imagination is not part of their respective roles in the ineffable plan. 

The British withdraw from Gallipoli and Suvla Bay, using a ruse with self-firing rifles to trick the Turkish that they were still under attack. The mechanism is designed by an Australian soldier, who later loses an eye and finger in France. The Australians and New Zealanders, along with the civilian corps, take two more weeks to fully evacuate. There are expansive repercussions. 

War chugs onwards. 

On a weary Sunday, Aziraphale joins Crowley at his allotment. Crowley is weeding in preparation to plant leeks. Aziraphale admires the wintering apple tree in the allotment adjacent. 

“Brings back memories, doesn’t it?”

“Rather it not,” Crowley mutters. 

“Not of that,” Aziraphale says, although he had admittedly also been thinking of Eden. “I mean the old orchards.”

Crowley yanks a snarled dandelion out by the roots. The orchards, which were vibrant and flourishing sixty years ago between Glasgow and Edinburgh, are rotting. It is no one’s fault. All creatures, great and small, are part of the ineffable plan. 

Aziraphale is so sorry to see their state. He loved jam made from the late summer crop. 

“This one’s getting replanted,” Crowley says, moving on his knees to pick up one of the leek seedlings. 

“Oh?” 

He pokes his left fore and middle fingers into the dirt. “That’s the Mally’s plot. They’re all dead, so,” and he pauses to place the leek in the hole, “a relative will take it. When the weather is better.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale says, quite deflated. “Where?”

Crowley pats down the soil. Aziraphale holds out a rag for him to wipe his hands. It looks like the rag used to be a cravat. One frayed corner still has _A.J.C._ stitched on, although the thread on the _J_ has come loose. 

“Don’t know,” Crowlely says, standing up and pushing his glasses back up his nose. “They’ll probably sell the plot, too. Help me with the cloches.” 

They secure the fresh plantings under the cloches. The break in the rain is coming to an end as Aziraphale helps Crowley pack up his kit near the shed. At the edge of the allotment an elderly woman is doing the same to her carrots. On the way out, Crowley and her exchange a short greeting. She smiles at Aziraphale, squinting slightly. 

“Are you a friend of Mister Crowley?” 

“Oh, um,” Aziraphale says as Crowley adjusts his scarf up under his chin, “well, business associate.” 

“How lovely,” the woman murmurs as they nod their goodbyes. “God be with you.”

“And with you,” Aziraphale beams.

“Uh, yeah,” Crowley mumbles. 

They move down to the main road. Crowley walks with his head down, using his handkerchief to clean the dirt from under his nails. Aziraphale considers the rag that is still in his hands. He had forgotten to put it back in Crowley’s kit. The weather drizzles on them, almost absentmindedly. 

In the end, they end up at a pub. It’s dingier than the one they’ve been frequenting in Edinburgh, but the lighting isn’t as bad. Aziraphale lies the rag over his lap. Crowley dips his handkerchief in a glass of water and wipes his hands down. It earns them a scowl from the barkeep, but Aziraphale’s order of an overpriced bottle of probably watered down gin turns that expression upside down. 

“Gin?” Crowley comments as the barkeep sets them up. “Kind of seventeenth century for you.” 

“I’m feeling nostalgic,” Aziraphale says, accepting his glass.

The gin tastes strongly of quinine. It was clearly meant for soldiers and likely purchased under table from the Western Infirmary. Aziraphale feels guilty for enjoying it. Crowley sits hunched at the table, the heels of his boots pressed up against the legs of his chair. A group of nurses walk by the windows for the afternoon shift, heads down against the rain. 

“What happened with your maid?”

Crowley swirls his gin on the tabletop. There’s shadows under his eyes. Aziraphale’s body doesn’t do that. He wonders if demons are assigned more sensitive bodies. 

“Got into debt for rent,” he says, very dull. “The war board didn’t like her working for, for—” he waves a hand vaguely at himself and then the air, “so they revoked her husband’s pension. She wouldn’t take charity, so she’s gone to the Bridge of Weir.”

“The tanneries?” Aziraphale asks, a little alarmed when Crowley nods. “But what of the girl?” 

“She’s been placed in a home,” Crowley says, closing his hands around his glass. “Her mother hopes to be able to pay her board.”

“But she must miss her mother.” 

The look Crowley gives him is empty. Aziraphale breathes.

“That’s terrible.”

Silence. They sit together for a while. The chemical sweetness of the quinine feels squeaky on their teeth. The old propaganda that gin causes blindness does the gavotte the back of Aziraphale’s brain. He wonders if he should have ordered scotch or even beer. 

“Angel.”

He looks up. Crowley has taken off his glasses. His head is down, keeping his eyes out of sight of anyone else who might be watching. He cleans his glasses on the last clean and dry edge of his handkerchief. 

“It shouldn’t have to be this way,” he whispers. 

Aziraphale swallows. His mouth tastes incredibly medicinal. 

“Yes,” he agrees.

 

In late February 1916, the German advance in Verdun is slowed by the spring thaw turning the ground into a swamp. A sudden snowstorm further delays them, and the French forces rush ninety-thousand troops and over twenty tons of ammunition from Bar-le-Duc. 

Altogether, the battle will last 303 days. But it is currently March 3. No one knows this yet, let alone an angel and a demon who spend more time with humans than their own kind. 

“Angel,” Crowley says, when he walks into a requisitioned house turned mess and finds Aziraphale eating a bowl of bully stew, “when did you get here?”

Aziraphale’s head jerks up. He looks straight at Crowley, turning only his neck. It’s too focused. Too sharp. Too—

“Crowley,” he says; Crowley’s boots squeak as he nearly takes a step back; Aziraphale’s pupils are holes; he does not blink. “Am I ever glad to see you.”

“Are you,” Crowley hazards.

Aziraphale’s chin jerks. Up. Down. Crowley swallows. He shoves his hands, which have been shaking nearly constantly, deeper into his greatcoat.

“Good,” he says, even though it’s anything but.

Against all of his instincts, Crowley approaches Aziraphale. Sits down at the table. The chair is uneven. When he closes his hand over the end of the battered right arm, he feels a babe’s teething marks on the underside. He pulls his hand away immediately. 

Aziraphale’s gaze traces Crowley’s face. His glasses. His nose, lips, jaw. His greatcoat with the collar that won’t lie flat. He hasn’t blinked. Crowley shoves his hands back into his pockets, hunching forward to relieve some of the tension crackling in his spine. Aziraphale watches his movements like he’s the only thing that exists. 

Reality is not ineffable. Crowley knows exactly what is going on. 

“Go home, angel,” Crowley whispers, begs. “This isn’t the way to Rome.” 

“Of course not,” Aziraphale says, but he still doesn’t blink. “Are you here on business?”

Crowley opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. His tongue feels too thick. He runs it behind his teeth. Curls his fingers in the lining of his pockets. His officers pistol sits heavy against his side. 

“I wanted to go to a spa,” he says. 

“Don’t we all,” Aziraphale says, finally blinking as a nervous tittering escapes him. 

Crowley lets out a breath. Aziraphale blinks again. He looks over Crowley once more, but it lacks the intensity of before. 

“I guess,” he says, picking up his spoon again, “we all have business here now.”

He takes a bite of his stew. Crowley watches him finish the bowl. Around them, a dozen or so other officers filter in. Most of them, once they get their bowls, complain to each other. A couple at the table directly behind Aziraphale discuss finding some women. Crowley wonders, with rising panic, if he is going to end up credited with their souls. 

“Where,” he starts because the panic is threatening to become a problem, “are you staying?”

They end up in a private room that Aziraphale, as a Capitaine, has been allotted. Normally, Crowley would make a snide joke about Capitaine being a good step down for a Principality, but none of this is normal. In fact, he thinks as he watches Aziraphale hang up their coats in what probably used to be some family’s heirloom wardrobe, nothing may ever be normal again. Aziraphale examines Crowley’s rank.

“Only Sous-Lieutenant?” he says, oddly offended on Crowley’s behalf. 

“I have men,” Crowley grumbles, crossing his arms and tucking his hands under his elbows. 

“You also have a gun,” Aziraphale says.

Crowley squints at him. It doesn’t appear to be an attempt at humour, and Aziraphale has never been given to unsolicited sarcasm, but sometimes he isn’t sure. Aziraphale seems to catch himself because he puffs up slightly, his telltale sign of embarrassment. 

“Apologies,” he says, and this he does mean, “I only arrived yesterday and haven’t got anything to offer to drink.” 

It is a testament to how long they’ve known each other that Crowley only shrugs. He does not simply point out the window at the munitions currently being rolled into a train car. Over the past six thousand years, they have seen, taken part in, and perpetuated enough divine and human orchestrated madness that the absurdity is accepted as standard. 

Accepted doesn’t mean acceptable anymore than ineffable means reality. 

In lieu of their usual drinks, Crowley finds himself sitting on the end of the lumpy farmhouse bed. Aziraphale sits in the rocking chair. Crowley resists the urge to simply tip back onto the bed and sleep until everything blows over. 

“It will blow over,” he says aloud, to reassure himself.

“I’m sure,” Aziraphale responds, sounding just as if not more unsure. 

The sound of that uncertainty in Aziraphale’s slightly snobby but so very kind voice is what does it. 

Crowley has never considered himself a particularly brave being. There’s many demons, angels, and humans who are made from much sterner, firmer, stronger stuff. They don’t think much about plants or have opinions about liquor or concern themselves with things that aren’t part of their preset designations in the ineffable plan. Demons and angels are adversaries. The humans are the instruments of God’s design and therefore Lucifer’s tools to corrupt. The world for everyone else is bound to the duality of good and evil, and no one is supposed to bother with trivial deviances like a single being sauntering up or down. 

These are the thoughts chasing themselves and eating their own tails in Crowley’s head as he tips on Aziraphale’s bed and resolutely does not cry. 

Crying, despite what some people will say, is not cathartic. It is simply something a body tends to do when it is overwhelmed. It spends pent up and excess energy. It is not something a body, assigned to a demon or an angel, is actually meant to use for coping. 

Crowley stares at the ceiling. Outside, the labour corps shout to communicate over a sudden gale. The ceiling has sturdy beams. A couple of cobweb fragments cling at the corners. 

The bed shifts.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, very softly, before lying down against his left side.

Snakes are coldblooded creatures. They like being close to the earth and warmth. Aziraphale isn’t earthly, but being around humans have brought a fresh, almost mulch-like scent to him. Like musty books. He is very warm.

“I’m worried about you.”

Crowley, his face buried against Aziraphale’s side, which is soft and warm and welcoming, laughs. It’s a little bitter. He curls his fingers, which hurt from their constant trembling, over the angel’s stomach.

He wants to go back to Glasgow and help Missus Mally’s sister replant the apple tree. He wants to watch the trains go in and out of a station for hours on end. He wants to go back to the flat in the West End that he just sold and sleep until the end of the world. But most of all: 

He wants to go to the Ritz with Aziraphale again. 

He breathes in. Out. Beneath his hand, Aziraphale’s stomach rises and falls with his diaphragm. They do not actually need to breathe. They do not need to sleep. They do not need many things. 

Aziraphale reaches up. He lays his hands over Crowley’s fist. His palms are soft, and his hands are wide and strong. They do not tremble. His heart thrums hard within his chest.

At the Eastern Gate to Eden, Aziraphale gave his sword to Adam. He didn’t really understand why he did it except that it felt like the right thing to do. 

Crowley didn’t understand it either, but he liked the gesture. Liked Aziraphale. So he reached out. 

They always had imagination. 

It is all part of the ineffable plan. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says.

“Ssshh,” Crowley begs.

Aziraphale looks up at the ceiling. The cobwebs. The beams. 

Outside, the machines of War roar.

But inside: 

Their hands are entwined and still.

**Author's Note:**

> Come cry about _Good Omens_ and history with me on Twitter @Metallic_Sweet


End file.
